Category: Digital Marketing

Toastmasters know, or ought to know, that first impressions are important: how confident you look walking to the front of the room, what words you choose to open your speech with, and how well you deliver them makes a huge difference in how your speech is perceived and how forgiving people will be of a small stumble later on. You need to think about recruiting the same way.

The first impression guests and prospective new members have of your club is probably what they see when they visit your website. This will be particularly true of new people who comes to your club on their own, rather than being invited in by an existing member. If someone is proactive enough to find the toastmasters.org website, search through area clubs and their schedules, and click through to your website — that is a good prospect, one you don’t want to let slip away. You want what they see online to convince them that yours is definitely the club to come to, not the one down the street.

Continue reading “Grow Your Toastmasters Club: Web and Social Media Tactics”

One of the most important things for your Toastmasters website to accomplish is to show how your club is unique and to share some of its personality. Some club websites are too cookie-cutter similar, emphasizing the things that all Toastmasters clubs have in common.

When I travel to different clubs, one of the things that impresses me is how different one club is from the next — how they take the same basic elements and combine them in different ways. A simple choice like whether to do Table Topics at the beginning of every meeting or at the end can make a big difference. One of the clubs in my area is more formal, so there I am “Toastmaster Carr” where in other clubs I’m just “David.”

Your website should make a strong case for why someone ought to pick your club to join rather than another one in town. I certainly don’t mean that you should badmouth any other group, but you should articulate a strong positive message. We are talking friendly rivalry rather than cut-throat competition. The truth is that some of the things you play up as advantages will be disadvantages in the eyes of some potential members — and that’s okay.

Continue reading “Your Toastmasters Club Website: Show Some Personality!”